Mariners: Just A Bit Outside

The Mariners did a very interesting and bizarre thing yesterday. Actually, the Marlins did most of the work and the M's happily capitalized. But, just to be clear, scoring what would become the winning run on an attempted intentional walk doesn't happen all that often. Nearly never.

The play again, until MLB makes me take it down for some reason.


First of all, I love it when an intentional walk (or at least an attempted one) backfires. The IBB may be strategically and statistically sound, but it's also lazy and boring. And it is so very gratifying when the next batter hits a home run. It is infinitely more gratifying when the pitcher can't even hit his catcher.

And that brings me to this sub-thought: you'd be inclined to think that somebody receiving yearly paychecks worth more than the average human earns in a lifetime FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF THROWING A BALL would, in fact, be able to throw a ball. But something happens when pitchers leave their comfort zones. When they're on the mound, in their stretch, in their windup, in their delivery, they are locked in. But when they have to throw it to a base, or even when they have to soft-toss it to their catcher, they're a little bit out of their element. Most guys can keep their crap together. But sometimes, every once in a while, HILARITY ENSUES.

An odd thing about this particular oddity, had Seattle batted last in the inning instead of first, the ballgame would have instantly ended. This was Seattle's ballpark. Seattle should have batted second. I'm sure there was a reason why everybody pretended this was a Marlins home game, but I wasn't paying attention. So the Marlins actually had a chance to redeem themselves. They didn't, of course. Although there was some Florida vindication in the fact that the hitter, Carlos Paguero, struck out once the intentional walk was deemed unnecessary.

My favorite thing about this incident -- about the video, really -- is angry frustrated curmudgeonly cussy Jack McKeon at the :24 second mark. At 80-years-old McKeon is the second-oldest manager in MLB history (Connie Mack managed until he was 88, but he also owned the team, so he could do whatever he wanted as old as he wanted to). McKeon is OLD BEANS, and his team falls apart sometimes, and he behaves exactly like the salty dog he is. Maybe I'm just too easily amused by the elderly.

For the record, Jack McKeon could probably beat me up.

I've seen this happen before, where a pitcher tries to intentionally walk a batter and ends up throwing the ball into outer space, and subsequently loses the game. I recall seeing it happen in some sort of college game that occurred a few years ago. But it's rare. Cherish the absurdity. And don't expect to see it happen again tomorrow. Although this is baseball, and the same thing could be happening right now as we speak.

Shoot, I'm missing baseball, aren't I?

Mariners: KG,J

In the late-80s baseball cards were crappy. Pictures were fuzzy, prints were off-center, the material was cheap, and even though you got a stick of gum in a pack (the taste of which went bad after about .000002 seconds) that stick of gum would often put a pink rectangular stain right across Rickey Henderson's cardboard face. But people didn't know any better. This was it as far as baseball cards were concerned. They were cheap to produce and the kids still bought 'em. And besides that, the Topps company was king of the card market. There were other smaller competitors like Donruss and Fleer, but Topps had been the top dog for so long that nobody could even attempt to dethrone them. Crappy cards, it appeared, were here to stay.

But in 1989 a new company called Upper Deck produced its inaugural set of baseball cards. The cards were glossy, the images were crisp, and -- holy smokies -- there were holographic stamps on the back! Other company's baseball cards looked (and actually were) cheap by comparison. Things would never be the same. Within a few years everybody would mimic Upper Deck's standards and image. Card quality, along with card costs, would rise.

Upper Deck needed somebody special to be the #1 card of that game-changing 1989 set. He had to be good at baseball, naturally, but he also needed to be young. These weren't your grandpappy's ball cards. Mr. Number One also needed to represent the future and a new era of sports.

Taking a big gamble, they chose a ballplayer who had yet to play a single Major League inning. They chose a ballplayer who, for his picture, was still wearing a Minor League uniform. They chose a teenager, a talented kid with a talented pedigree.

They chose a smiling, confident, gold-chain wearing Ken Griffey, Jr.



This was probably the best gamble in the history of gambles. That year in 1989 he broke into the big leagues and finished 3rd in the Rookie Of The Year voting. The next season he won the first of his ten Gold Glove awards and was voted into the first of his 13 All-Star games. The year after that he won the first of his seven Silver Slugger awards. Thanks in part to Griffey's success, Upper Deck had established itself as the premier card company. Griffey, meanwhile, had established himself not only as the new face of the Mariners, but as the new face of baseball.

Early on Junior was garnering comparisons to his father who, through a rare confluence of age and talent, was still playing Major League baseball. Senior had been a good consistent hitter since the early 1970s, a significant member of the Big Red Machine of the late 70s, and the MVP of the 1980 All-Star game. In August of 1990, Dad Griffey signed with the Seattle Mariners and joined his son in the outfield.



This situation was as bizarre as it was celebrated. There they were, father and son, playing outfield for the Mariners together. Nothing like this had ever happened before. It was simultaneously weird and awesome. They were having fun together (Junior always looked like he was having fun anyway), jostling each other and being good sports for the media. They posed for odd pictures. Sometimes Junior would steal a pop-fly his father was set to catch. They once even hit back-to-back home runs. It was like watching the end of Field Of Dreams every single day.

Dad retired in 1991, but Junior was still rising, exceeding all expectations anybody ever had of him. He was a great and graceful fielder, swift and agile, but it was nothing compared to his hitting.

Ken Griffey, Jr. had the smoothest, easiest, most natural-looking swing of any player I've seen. If God Himself was Junior's hitting coach it couldn't have looked any better. His mechanics appeared so easy to replicate that anybody could have been duped into thinking they had a big league swing. And it was impossible to fathom how that gliding swing could send a baseball 450 feet away. It was the perfect swing, and Griffey brought it with him every time he came to the plate.



With his stellar play, good looks, killer smile, and great marketability, by the mid-1990s Griffey had become a superstar. He had Nike endorsements, Wheaties, Nintendo games, Simpsons cameos, and prevented the Twins from going to the playoffs in Little Big League. In 1995 he took the Mariners to their first ever American League Championship Series appearance.

He was also hitting home runs at an accelerated rate. The 1994 season was shortened due to the players' strike and a wrist injury cut his 1995 season in half (he smashed his gloved hand into the outfield wall while making a successful leaping catch), but even so between 1993 and 2000 Griffey averaged 44 home runs a season, or a home run every 11.88 at-bats. Before he turned 30 years-old people were already speculating when he would break Hank Aaron's all-time home run record.

Before the 2000 season Griffey was traded to the Cincinnati Reds for four players. His numbers were down a little bit that season (hitting .271 with "only" 40 home runs and "only" 118 RBIs), but it would be the last great Griffey-esque Major League season he would ever have. Seattle fans were sad to see him go as the Kid had been the face of the franchise for the past decade, but after the 2000 season the M's would acquire an aggressive and nimble outfielder from the Orix Blue Waves. If anybody could make Seattle forget about Junior, it would be Ichiro.

Despite enjoying a relatively healthy career up to this point, Griffey suddenly and inexplicably became injury prone. It was as if Griffey's kryptonite was Ohio water, and every time he took a shower he ended up on the disabled list.
- In 2001 he missed 45 games after injuring his left hamstring.
- In 2002 he missed 41 games after injuring his knee, missed about 30 games after injuring his right hamstring, and missed a smattering of other games due to injured hips and thighs and legs.
- In 2003 he missed 33 games due to a shoulder injury and missed the final 68 games of the season due to an injured right ankle.
- In 2004 he missed 71 total games due to his injured right hamstring.
- In 2005 he missed the final 26 games of the season due to a foot injury (though he was still named the Comeback Player of the Year).
- In 2006 he missed 26 games due to an injury to his right knee.

His injuries became a running joke. It was virtually expected that Ken Griffey, Jr. would miss at least a quarter of the season due to a strained or broken somethingrather. My favorite lick came from The Dugout, a cussy webcomic that pretends baseball players use AOL chatrooms. Griffey's screen name was Elijah_Price.

Griffey, when healthy, was still productive, but the all-time home run record became an impossibility. All that remained were smaller personal milestones, the finishing touches upon a Hall of Fame career.

2007 was a resurgent year for Griffey. Despite missing games due to a chest injury, a groin injury, the flu, and something called pleurisy, he still played 144 games, hit 30 home runs, batted a semi-respectable .277, and was voted into his final All-Star Game.

A quick note about that 2007 All-Star game --
Still with Cincinnatti and representing the National League, Griffey had two RBIs in that game. However his Seattle replacement, Ichiro Suzuki, stole the show with an inside-the-park home run, the first in All-Star history. Griffey, once the embodiment of the future of baseball, was now overshadowed by the next generation of stars.*

[*A disclaimer, and really just a quick mention about how peculiar Ichiro really is. Even though it seems Ichiro can play forever, the man is only four years younger than Griffey. He came to the Majors at the age of 27, which would normally qualify him for "late bloomer" status were it not for the fact he spent his formidable years conquering Japanese baseball. Anyway, Ichiro will get his own entry soon enough.]

2008 turned out to be a season of footnotes as Griffey became the sixth player to hit 600 career home runs. It wasn't 755, but it would do. Later that year he was traded by the Reds -- along with some cash -- to the White Sox for two non-stars. It was strange to see him in a Chicago jersey, as if he were merely playing those games in nice pajamas. It was a forgettable 41-game stint and he was granted free agency at the end of the season.



Griffey was on his last legs, and Seattle did a very nice thing by signing him for the 2009 season. He had made the franchise relevant in the 1990s, and even if he played a limited role in those final years signing Griffey was the least the team could do.

However his return turned out to be more sad than dignified. The Kid, now a father himself, was clearly older now. His slender frame had been replaced with a pudgier one. The speed that made him a Gold Glove outfielder was gone. The coordination and quickness that made him one of the most feared hitters in baseball, also gone. All that remained were his name, his image, and that sweet swing. For some people that was enough, relying on their decade-old memories to fill in the blank spots. But for a team trying to compete it was not enough. Griffey spent an increasing amount of time riding the bench, pinch-hitting here and there, a symbol more than an active player.

Then one day in 2010, completely out of the blue, he called it a day. That was it. The Major League career of Ken Griffey, Jr. was over.

Even though the disappointing latter half of Griffey's career is still fresh in our minds, when he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame in four years it won't be the injuries or the frustration or the White Sox uniform we remember. It will be the swing, the style, and the hundreds of home runs. We'll remember the toothy teenager on the front of Upper Deck card #1. We'll remember Junior -- The Kid -- and how he changed the game twenty years ago.

Mariners: Getting To Know David Pauley

I just added David Pauley to my fantasy baseball team.

I know absolutely nothing about him.
Let's discover Mr. Pauley... together!

A couple days ago one of my relief pitchers (who will remain unnamed -- you never know who's reading these things) went on the disabled list. He was the black sheep on my otherwise stellar pitching staff, so I was looking for any excuse to dump him. An upper back strain rendered him completely useless (a step down from his "mostly" useless status when he was healthy) and I dropped him like a Christmas goose.

I chose to replace him with David Pauley for a couple reasons. First of all, when I drop a player I like to replace him with somebody who fields the same position. It maintains the balance of the universe, or something. Secondly, Pauley's at-a-glance stats are extraordinary.

ERA = 0.94
WHIP = 0.76
24 strikeouts in 38 1/3 innings (not bad)
4 wins

Four wins is unique for a middle reliever at this point in the season. Starting pitchers usually accumulate those wins. There are various statistical circumstances that would negate this, but without looking at specific game summaries it seems likely that Pauley was the last pitcher on the mound four times when his team took the lead late in a ballgame. This doesn't actually mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of baseball, just a slight abnormality. I don't expect Pauley to finish the season with ten wins.

A quick note on WHIP, by the way:
Walks + Hits,
divide it all by Innings Pitched.
It's a good indicator of how well a pitcher keeps guys off of base. A WHIP around 1.00 is very good. At 0.76 Pauley is only allowing one baserunner every other inning or so. Granted, he's only in each game for one or two innings... but still!

So opening up our handy-dandy Baseball-Reference.com profile, what do we find?

- Up until this season Pauley had been groomed to be a starting pitcher. For ten professional seasons he was starting baseball games. I don't know why, but it never appeared to work out. Somebody somewhere decided before this season began that, hey, maybe he should be pitching at the end of the game instead of at the beginning. It turns out he works very well in frequent short inning-long spurts rather than periodic multi-inning starts.

- Opponents are only batting .167 against Pauley. More surprising, opponents' slugging percentage is only .183. Slugging percentage reflects how often batters his doubles, triples, and home runs. So far this season Pauley has given up zero home runs, zero triples, and only two doubles.

- That WHIP thing we were talking about, prior to this season his lowest WHIP was 1.18. That was five seasons ago back in AA where the batters will swing at absolutely anything (and miss). The question then becomes this: can he sustain this new found ability to keep runners off the bases, or will he regress back to his old statistical standards?

- Additionally, Pauley has been the beneficiary of good luck. Even when batters do put the ball in play, they're still only batting .204. Normally this number is significantly higher (last season, for example, it was .262) but it seems Seattle's fielders have been in the right place at the right time... at least while Pauley is on the mound.

- Apparently Pauley is making $422,000 this season. That may seem like a lot of money (and it is, at least compared to my bi-weekly paycheck), but the way he's performing it's an absolute bargain.

- David Pauley's middle name is Wayne.

- He looks slightly toasted in all of his head shots.

I've mentioned Seattle closer Brandon League's inconsistency before. If League should fall apart before David Aardsma's return then there is a good chance the Mariners would go with Pauley to finish off ballgames.

That is, as long as Pauley keeps doing his thing. There's that pesky invisible force called regression, and the bullpen is a new role for Pauley. It wouldn't surprise me to see him slide the second half of the season, but for now it appears he has finally found his niche.

Mariners: Closers & Brandon League

Every team wants a solid pitcher to finish the game. There needs to be a man to slam the door on the other team's offense in that final inning of play. If his team has a slight lead in the ninth inning, he is expected to preserve that lead. The man to do it is called The Closer.

The Closer is an uncharacteristically severe term in a sport that, as pointed out by George Carlin, is full of kinder, gentler nomenclatures. It's finality in a game defined by its open-ended perimeter and un-timed play.

And so with that in mind it sort of makes sense that closers themselves are an uncharacteristic bunch. Some guys are weirder than others. Some are outright eccentrics. Baseball is full of them. Rollie Fingers and his twirly mustache. Dennis Eckersley and his side-armed cheese. Dan Quisenberry and his submarined junk. Antonio Alfonseca and his twelve fingers. Ugueth Urbina, who is currently in a Venezuelan prison for taking a machete to farm workers before dousing them in gasoline. Endearing bunch of scamps, they all are.

And while eccentricities keep things interesting, it's dominance that's truly matters. A closer who can successfully seal the deal 30+ times a season is a valuable commodity. When Mariano Rivera enters the game, even before he records his three outs, everybody knows the Yankees just won. It's that automatic.

[As an aside, the broadest and most common way to measure a closer's effectiveness is the Saves statistic. A save is credited to a closing pitcher when he satisfies a very specific and somewhat arbitrarily defined set of circumstances. It's a poor measure of the pitcher's ability as it's dependent on several other variables. Poor fielding, which the pitcher has no control over, can blow a save opportunity. Or if his team sucks a closer might never get a good save opportunity to begin with. Conversely, even a poor pitcher can accumulate a substantial amount of saves if he pitches every night.]

The Mariners have had few eccentric closers in their history and even fewer dominant ones. The closest thing they've had to a consistent lights-out closer was JJ Putz. For two seasons -- 2006 and 2007 -- Putz was among the best American League closers. He had an off year in 2008 as he was sidelined a month due to injury, and during the off-season Seattle traded him away in a convoluted three-team deal that ultimately gave the Mariners very little in return. JJ Putz eventually regained his effectiveness and is now once again dominating the closer role, this time in Arizona.

Following the departure of Putz, Seattle's last effective closer was David Aardsma, who incidentally appears first in the Major League Baseball Encyclopedia (this is a tremendous trivia factoid). Aardsma was a very good closer in 2009 and a moderately good closer in 2010. He is currently recovering from elbow and hip problems and has yet to make a Major League appearance in 2011. The Mariners are still banking on him to return to the team later in the season, but they've had to use a filler in the meantime, and that brings us to...



Brandon League, Seattle's current closer.

I remember Brandon League from his Jays days, but since Seattle acquired him I haven't been able to keep tabs on the guy. This could be a good thing as he's always mildly irritated me.

His literal slack-jawedness bugs me. As he squints through his goggles to get the sign from the catcher his mouth will hang open. It doesn't effect my opinion of him as a person and it likely has no bearing on his pitching ability, but CLOSE YOUR DANG MOUTH.

More than that, though, at least as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays, I was always bugged by how often Brandon League screwed things up.

Apparently there were high hopes for League as he was to be the Blue Jays' future closer. Unfortunately for him he was never given many chances to close games for Toronto, mostly because he proved to be tremendously inconsistent. His season-to-season stats vary wildly, and even game-to-game his effectiveness was never a sure thing. It didn't help that he often had trouble throwing strikes. Consequently, by the end of his Toronto tenure, he was used primarily as a set-up man, the guy who sets the table for the closer.

I'll also mention that he got frustrated very easily. You could see it. Some pitchers control their frustration and get themselves out of a rough inning. League channeled his frustration into more frustration, throwing too wild, throwing too straight, making life difficult for himself.

After the 2009 season the Jays traded League and a minor leaguer to Seattle for Brandon Morrow, then also a closer-in-training. Morrow converted to a starting pitcher halfway through the '09 season and that is the role he continues today with Toronto.

Brandon League still had to prove himself with Seattle so in '10 he was once again relegated to the set-up role in front of Aardsma. League did moderately well, striking out twice as many batters as he walked and keeping his ERA at a respectable 3.42.

But then, as I mentioned before, Aardsma's body fell apart and rather than acquiring a quick-fix, the Mariners opted to use League as their closer, at least until Aardsma returned. And there he remains, slack-jawed, goggle-eyed, and in the role that's been denied him his whole Major League career.

I don't have much to go on besides his numbers, but he seems to be doing an adequate enough job. League has only walked four guys in 28 innings of work, which is actually quite impressive, especially for him. He also currently leads the league in saves. Batters are only batting .238 against him. These are all good things.

Something I would worry about are the number of games he's appeared in. League has made an appearance in nearly half of Seattle's games (and in fact leads the American League in games finished). He's proven the past two seasons that he can endure the heavy workload, but he's never done so in the high pressure closing role. There is always the burn-out risk, although if a healthy Aardsma gets his job back that will be a non-issue.

Another thing to watch out for is his moderately high ERA. Good closers keep their ERA under 4.00. The best keep it under 3.00. As of today League's is 4.18. League (and/or his teammates) are allowing late inning runs to score, and this will always come back to bite.

Also, there's that frustration thing. If he keeps his shiz together he should be okay. If not, pray for Aardsma.

Mariners: Introduction

I'm looking at the Mariners' roster and I see a lot of potential. Not future positive potential, but past potential that was never met. I see names like Brandon League, Chone Figgins, Jamey Wright, Jack Cust, Milton effing Bradley... guys who've shown flashes of brilliance in the past, but have since performed disappointingly once significant time and money was spent investing in them. These are guys the team picks up, hoping/gambling for that break-out season that would prove that lofty contract was actually a shrewd move. This is a game the Kansas City Royals have played for years. It's unproductive and terribly annoying.

There are, however, authentic glimmers of light this season. There is always Ichiro. Sweet, sweet Ichiro. Felix Hernandez is coming off of a Cy Young Award-winning season. Some guy named Justin Smoak is being deceptively productive. The pitching staff as a whole has been surprisingly effective.

And yet it would surprise nobody if Seattle finished in the bottom half of the AL West. The AL West, by the way, is a historically crappy division. And, historically, its forgotten cellar is where the Mariners belong.

My personal connection to the M's is tenuous at best. The franchise itself is only five years older than I am, and while I spent my early youth in the American mid-west, the Mariners invisibly trudged through the 1980s, hidden from me by their consistently awful performances and cast way over in the upper left-hand corner of the United States. For a while I wasn't even convinced they were a Major League team. What was a "Mariner" to a seven-year-old anyway?

But then, of course, Ken Griffey, Jr. came along, and while they team played only marginally better for the next half-decade, Junior made the team relevant to aspiring ballplayers like myself.

Then, almost all at once, they became contenders and even developed a peculiar rivalry with the New York Yankees, a favorite team of mine.

And then came Ichiro. Ichiro, my goodness. His singular name alone is like an untranslatable word that describes grace and finesse and suaveness and gazelles and hot Asian sex.

But as Ichiro ages I wonder if the team and it's character will wither away, or will the Mariners move towards another decade of prominence and relevance on the shoulders of guys like Smoak and King Felix.